CD REVIEW

Parms “Parms”

Formed in February 2008, in the short span of eight months Tokyo trio Parms penned their debut eponymous effort and traveled to Louisville, Ky., to record its 13 tracks with producer Kevin Ratterman, the ex-drummer for American emo act Elliot. The album was issued earlier this year in the United States and South Korea with the band touring both countries to promote it and has now been released domestically.

Parms are at their best on opening cut “Sunlight.” Peppered with short snippets of distorted, spacey noise, the power-pop piece alternates between quiet, melodic guitar bits and hard hitting, alternative rock and wouldn’t sound out of place blasting away on commercial radio airwaves. Vocalist Satoshi Tsugahara’s (formerly of Tokyo band Drumkan) nasal vocal delivery and English lyrics are more prominent on the well-crafted hook-heavy, emo song “Stolen my Heart” and the high energy punker “Lose Sight of All.”

While far from bad, there’s little that distinguishes many of the disc’s remaining tracks causing them to blend into what basically becomes background noise. However, with some fine tuning Parms could potentially be future candidates for the likes of local youth-geared festivals such as Punkspring or Summer Sonic.